Good morning. We're going to be in 2 Samuel
chapter 24. 2 Samuel chapter 24. Welcome our newlyweds. John and
Deborah got married Wednesday night, and they're here with
us this morning, so congratulations, guys. We're happy for you. Let's ask the Lord's blessings. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for giving us a desire to worship Thee. Lord, we are so hopeful and dependent
and thankful for the promises that you've given us to meet
when we gather together in the name of thy dear son. Lord, we
pray that you would enable us to speak and to hear the truth
about Christ. Lord, that we would be brought
once again to trust him to depend upon him, to rejoice in him,
to rest in him, to find him to be our life and all of our delight. Lord, bless this hour. Open what no man can shut. Open
our hearts. Open your word. Open the windows
of heaven. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. I've titled this message David's
Greatest Sin Yet. David's Greatest Sin Yet. In
2 Samuel chapter 24, David is an old man. His kingdom has been well established. Israel is the most powerful and
greatest nation in all the world, and David is sitting upon the
throne that God gave him. All of his successes, beginning
with the slaying of Goliath and throughout all of his military
campaigns, he knew was to the glory of God. You would think
that in his old age, under the circumstances, that he would
demonstrate the greatest degree of humility, but just the opposite
is the case. In 2 Samuel chapter 24, David,
in pride, decides that he wants to take
a census of children of Israel. He wants to know, how big is
my army? He knew it was wrong. Joab warned
him. Joab said, don't do this. Don't
do this. He did it anyway. And in 2 Samuel
24, he He makes Joab go out in Israel
and in Judah to count his army that he might boast in the accomplishments
of his glory. Finds out, takes Joab 10 months
to do the survey, to do the, what do you call it? The census. Takes him 10 months. Joab comes back and he reports
to David that there are 800,000 men in Israel and 500,000 men
in Judah, all armed and ready for battle. And as soon as David
heard that report, the scripture says that his heart smote him. The Holy Spirit convicted him
of his pride and the consequences of his sin. was that God sent
an angel and slew 70,000 of those men. Now, I've titled
this David's Greatest Sin. If we are to measure the evil
of sin based on its consequences, which we can, The consequences
of David's sin, as wicked as it was with Bathsheba and with
Uriah and all of Uriah's men, the consequences of that sin
was that the sword never departed from David's home and that he
suffered among his own family members, his children, the results
of that sin. The consequences of this sin
is 70,000 lives. And yet, the blood of
70,000 men could not atone for what David did. At the end of
chapter 24 in 2 Samuel, David has to make a sacrifice. Before,
look at the last verse of this chapter. Verse 25, and David
built there an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings
and peace offerings. So now the Lord was entreated
for the land and the plague was stayed in Israel. The consequences of David's sin
and the death of 70,000 men did not atone for his sin. a sacrifice
had to be made in order for David, in order for the plague, the
plague of sin to be stayed, a sacrifice had to be made. I think it was Martin Luther
that said the three most important graces in a believer's life is
humility, Humility, humility. A true humility, true humility is not the result
of becoming a better person. True humility is the result of
seeing how bad we really are. The reason why older saints become
more humble is not because they are better, but because they
see more clearly how bad they really are. Humility can be a sign of pride if it's not if
it's not something that God's done in the heart, David's going
to be humbled. And here he is at the end of
his life, much like the Apostle Paul. When the Apostle Paul was
writing his letters to the churches early in his ministry, he writes
to the church at Corinth and he says in defense of himself,
because they were questioning his apostolic authority. And
he says, yes, I am the least of all the apostles, born out
of due time. I wasn't there with the other
apostles when they were with the Lord during those three years.
And if you want to identify me as the least of all the apostles,
fine, that's what I am. Later on in his life, when he
was writing to the church at Ephesus, he said, I am the least
the less than the least of all the saints. So now he's come
from identifying himself early in his ministry as the least
of the apostles to the mid part of his ministry saying that I
am less than the least of all the saints. And he wasn't speaking
in a false humility. These are words inspired by the
Holy Spirit that he's giving us. When he writes to Timothy
at the end of his life, In a Roman prison, he identifies himself
like this. He says, I am the chief of all
sinners. I am the chief of all sinners. When will I see my need for grace
the most? When will I come to know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth
no good thing, that I have no righteousness, I have no claim
on God, I have nothing to present to obligate him to save me or
to allow me into heaven, when will I come to the realization
of that the most? When will sin abound in my heart
the most? When I'm about to close my eyes
in death, I will then become the greatest sinner I've ever
been. As John Newton said, you know, when
I was a young man, I knew a lot of things. But now that I'm old,
I only know two things for sure. I'm a great sinner. Christ is
a great savior. Where sin abounds, And so oftentimes
people think of sin as just bad behavior. It's not what we're
talking about. Men take pride in the fact that,
well, I don't do what I used to do, and I'm doing things I
didn't used to do. And they look at their behavior
as evidences of their salvation. I pray the Lord will correct
us whenever our behavior is bad. I pray that he will. that he
will cause us to stop doing things we ought not to be doing and
do that which we weren't doing before. People think, well, I can insulate
myself from sin by separating myself from the world. And so
they lock themselves in a theological monastery and closet, trying
to avoid the temptations of sin, not knowing that they've just
closed themselves up in the root of all sin. This matter of sin,
this matter of me being humble before God, is my greatest need. And it's the
root of all sin. The sin that doth so easily beset
us. Are different people tempted
to different sins? Yeah, yeah, they are, we are. One person may have this weakness,
another may have that weakness. But the sin that doth so easily
beset all of us, the mother of all sins, the fountain of all
sins, the seedbed, if you will, from which all the weeds of sin
grow, is pride. It's pride. It's unbelief. Oftentimes we see people get
interested in spiritual things, get interested in God in times
of trouble. Perhaps when they are suffering
the consequence of a gross sin or bad behavior, perhaps, you
know, whatever it might be. I'm not going to use any examples.
The problem is when that When that settles down, we find out
what their view of sin really is, because so oftentimes, their
interest in spiritual things and their interest in God stops,
it wanes at least, or it stops completely when the trouble is
past. It's often been said that that
which is born in the storm dies in the calm. I've seen that happen
time and time again. People come and they're faithful
and they're active when they're in trouble and the trouble goes
away and you don't see them anymore. So what's the difference? What
is it that makes the child of God need the gospel? need Christ, need grace, need
forgiveness. It's a problem that never goes
away. It's a problem that actually
only gets worse. Hopefully not in its outward
appearances, but certainly it gets worse in the perception. The more the brighter the light
gets, the more The more dark hallways we realize there were
there we never saw before, we become more and more sinful. This is David's greatest sin.
It's his greatest sin. Worse than all the old other
things, he's conquered all of his enemies. His kingdom is firmly
established. Israel is unmatched as the greatest
and most powerful nation in the world, and he's sitting on the
throne that God's given him. And pride rears its ugly head
once again. David wants to glory in what
he has and where he is. Is his glorying any different
than that of Nebuchadnezzar? No. Nebuchadnezzar said, this great
nation which I have built. God humbled Nebuchadnezzar. Let's
turn to that passage real quickly, Daniel chapter 4. Look at me at verse 28. All this
came upon King Nebuchadnezzar at the end of 12 months. He walked
in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon and the king spake
and said, is not this great Babylon that which I have built for the
house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honor
of my majesty? And while the word was in the
King's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven saying, O King Nebuchadnezzar,
to thee it is spoken, the kingdom is departed from thee. What a blessing it is when the
Holy Spirit convicts us of sin. David's heart smote him, smote
him. It is expedient for you that
I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter
will not come. This conviction of the Holy Spirit
is a great comfort to the children of God. Because it's not until
the Holy Spirit convicts us of our pride and our, well, let
me finish that verse. He will convict the world of
sin because they believe not on me. There's the sin that does
so easily beset us, unbelief, unbelief. And the more we're brought by
the grace of God to believe on Christ, the more of the unbelief
that we see remains in our old man. so that we cry, Lord, I
believe. Oh, I believe. Thank God I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. Lord,
I see more of the unbelief. I see more of my looking away
from Christ, trying to find my comfort and my peace and my joy
and my happiness in something other than Him. Lord, what a
sinful man that I am. And that, you see, that's humility. Humility is not because I'm getting
better. Not true humility. That's false
humility. I'm gonna act humble in front
of men in order to convince them how holy I am and how good I
am. No, true humility comes from the realization of how bad I
really am. How bad I really am. And it's that badness, it is
that sinfulness that causes me to find all my hope and all my
joy and all my satisfaction, all my comfort and all my life
in Christ, my Savior, my substitute, my sin-bearer. See, the gospel is a two-edged
sword. It has to kill before it can
make us alive. Paul said, I die daily. I die
daily. I see more and more. You've heard it. I've said it
before. All the problems in this world can be solved by one of two things.
All the problems, they can be solved by money, or they can
be solved by time. When time runs out and we draw
our last breath, you don't have no problems in this world. But
there's a problem. that no amount of money can buy
you out of, and an eternity of time won't solve. And that's
sin. That's sin. Paul said, at the end of my life,
Christ, at the end of his life, Christ, this is a faithful saying. Worthy of all acceptation, Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. I am chief. The more we grow in grace and
in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, the more we see
our need for grace. And the more knowledge he gives
of himself, the more sinful we see ourselves
to be. And where sin abounds, grace
does much more bound. You can't have one without the
other. We're not talking about being
sinful in order to try to drive everyone down into some sort
of self-wallowing depression or Whatever. No, no, this is the truth that
causes us to look up. That spirit of God would smite
our hearts. Pride goeth before destruction
and a haughty spirit before a fall. And those who walk in pride,
this is what he told Nebuchadnezzar there in Daniel, this is what
Nebuchadnezzar said, those who walk in pride, he is able to
abase, to abase. What a blessing it is when God
the Holy Spirit smites our hearts and gives us a glimpse, just
a little glimpse. We could not bear seeing the
fullness of our sin. We couldn't see it. We would
not show ourselves in public. We could not look in a mirror
if we could see ourselves as wicked and prideful and sinful
and unbelieving as we really are. God shows us just enough.
And as we grow in grace, we see more and more of it. This is
what David's greatest... I told the men this morning,
you know, Our greatest sin is yet to come. Your greatest sin is yet to come. And we're not promoting sinful
behavior. That's not what we're talking
about here. God restrain us from that. We're talking about the
root of all sin. We've said it before. You know,
the middle letter in the word pride is the same middle letter
in the word sin, and there's my problem. There's my problem. Yeah, it's me. It's me. I'm my own worst enemy. I can
justify myself and accuse my circumstances and blame other
people, but when the Spirit of God smites my heart, I've got
no place to turn but to Christ. I've got no place to find forgiveness. I've got no place to find hope.
I've got no place to find life, but in Christ. And oh, what joy
there is in him. What life there is in him. What
hope there is in him. The only hope that I have is
in him. I can't find anywhere else. Everything else leaves me wanting
But when I'm brought to look to Christ, I'm not wanting anymore. You drink of this well, you'll never go to another well
to drink again. What'd that woman at the well
say in John chapter four? Lord, give me that water that I don't
have to go to this well. He thought, out of your belly
will flow rivers of living water. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians,
chapter 1. 1 Corinthians, chapter 1. Let's begin reading in verse
26. 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 26. For you see your calling,
brethren, hear these words, God the Holy Spirit speaking to your
heart, to my heart? You see your calling, brethren?
How that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things
of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the
weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty,
and the base things of the world, and the things which are despised
hath God chosen, yea, the things which are not. to bring to naught
the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. I'll not share my glory with
another." That's David's sin. David thought that he could take
some glory in where he was. Go out and do a census, Joab.
Joab said, no, no, no, no, don't do that, King. By the way, let me show you one
thing in this text. Go back with me to our text in 2 Samuel chapter 24, verse 1. And again, the anger
of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against
them to say, go number Israel and Judah. In the margin of my Bible, it points me to 1 Chronicles. 1 Chronicles chapter 21, if you'll
turn with me there. The Chronicles and the Kings
recount the same stories that we find in 1 and 2 Samuel. These
are the historical record of those events. And this is how
1 Chronicles chapter 21 tells us what we have in 2 Samuel 24. Verse 1, and Satan stood up against
Israel and provoked David to number Israel. This was an evil
spirit that provoked David. And it is an evil spirit that
every time, 1 Chronicles, did I say 2 Chronicles? I see some
of you looking around. 1 Chronicles chapter 21, verse
one. It was Satan that stood up and
provoked David to do this thing. And in our text, It leads us
to think that it was the Lord that caused David. Well, two
things I want to say about that. The Lord is the first cause of
all things. And Satan is his devil. And the Lord allows Satan to
tempt us like he did with Job. Job had
to go get God, Satan had to get permission before he could do
what he did to Job. And so God's the first cause of all things. And if the Lord gives Satan permission
to provoke us in pride, it will be for the purpose of driving
us to Christ. Smiting our hearts with our sin
nature and causing us to realize and to believe that I have no
righteousness. We would conclude with Job, behold,
behold, I am vile. We would say with Isaiah, woe
is me. My eyes have seen the king. I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean
lips. I live among a people of unclean
lips. I'm a dead man. We would say with Daniel, my
comeliness has been turned in me. My beauty, my strength, all
the good things I thought I had have been turned in me now into
corruption now that I've seen him. People get confused about what
a sinner and a saint is. Truth is that all saints are
sinners, and all true sinners are saints. There's not two different people.
It's the same person. It's the same person. You say,
well, that's a sinner and that's a saint. No, no, no, no. That person might be sinful.
But until they've been made a saint, they'll never see themselves
as a sinner. The same person. What could David do? 70,000 lives did not atone for what
he did. All he did was take a census.
That's all he did. But he knew in his heart what
he was doing was lifting himself up above God. He was robbing
from God his glory. He was taking in pride credit
for his accomplishments. He was looking to himself to
see what he had done. and boasting with other men how
great and glorious he was rather than giving to God all the glory,
all the glory. Among unbelievers, we think of
pride as that person who is outwardly arrogant and boastful, and that is pride. But that sort of outward behavior
is usually a cover-up for great insecurity. A person that we look at and
we say, well, look how proud that person is. They're just
covering up how fearful and insecure they really are. That's really at the root of
narcissism. A narcissist is a very fearful
and insecure person who's trying to portray themselves as something
different. And they come out very arrogant
and proud. But the worst form of pride among
unbelievers is the free will works gospel. A man who thinks that he can
that he can obligate God to save him by a decision that he makes,
or a prayer that he prays, or a work that he performs, or some
truth that he comes to understand, that God's waiting to save him,
and that he robs God of his glory. You see, the false gospel, the
free will, works gospel, is full of people who show themselves
outwardly as being very humble. A religious person can be very
outwardly humble. But if you listen to what they
say about how they got saved, oh, it's the worst form of pride
of all. The worst form of pride at all
is a free will works gospel, where men take God off his throne
and put themselves on the throne of God. But that's among unbelievers. Some of the most outwardly humble
men and women are really the worst as far as pride goes. But unbelievers, when they demonstrate
their pride, however it manifests itself, are only sinning against
conscience. They're sinning against the law,
which has been written on their hearts from their birth. They know there is a God, and
they violate their conscience in that sin. When the believer sins, we sin against love. We sin against
light. We sin against grace. And to
whom much is given, much is required. Who's been given more light and
more grace and more blessings and more favors and remain as unbelieving as
you are, as I am. Child of God can say with the
Apostle Paul, I am the chief of all centers. That's not a false humility.
That's a truth. This was David's greatest sin. And it's my greatest sin. And
it's your greatest sin. And there's only one remedy for
it. David had to make a sacrifice. So David goes, verse 18 of our
text, 2 Samuel 24. And Gad, that was David's prophet,
came to David and said to him, go up, rear an altar unto the
Lord in the threshing floor of Arunah. Now Arunah's name means
to rejoice with shouting. to rejoice with shouting. Arunah
was a Jebusite. Jebus was the original name for
Jerusalem. Arubah owns a threshing floor
in Jerusalem. And David goes to him, and David,
according to the saying of Gad, verse 19, went up as the Lord
commanded. And Arunah looked and saw the
king and his servants coming on toward him. And Arunah went
up and bowed himself before the king on his face upon the ground. And Arunah said, wherefore is
my Lord the king come to his servant? And David said, to buy
the threshing floor of the, to build an altar unto the Lord.
that the plague may be stayed from the people. And Arunah said
unto David, let my lord the king take and offer up what seemeth
good unto him. Behold, here be oxen for burnt
sacrifices and threshing instruments and the other instruments of
the oxen for wood. And all these things did Arunah
as a king give unto the king. And Arunah said unto the king, the Lord thy God accept thee.
And the king, David, said unto Arunah, Nay, but I will surely
buy it of thee at a price. Neither will I offer burnt offerings
unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So
David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of
silver. And David built there an altar
and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the sacrifice
was, so the Lord was entreated for the land and the plague was
stayed. It was a plague that God sent
that killed those 70,000 men. David had to make a sacrifice
and he made it on a threshing floor. Now a threshing floor
is an elevated area of a flat stone where men would go and
take their wheat and lay the wheat on the stone and gently
gently beat the wheat to separate the grain from the chaff, and
then cast it up into the air just at the right time when the
breeze was blowing not too strong as to blow even the grain away,
and not too light as to not blow the chaff away. But the breeze
had to be blowing just right. And they would throw it up into
the air, and the breeze would blow away the chaff, and the
grain would fall to the ground, and the grain would be gathered,
and put into the storehouse, and bread would be made from
that grain. This threshing floor is the exact
same place that Abraham took Isaac to sacrifice him before
the Lord. When Isaac asked him, Father,
here is the wood and here is the fire, but where is the lamb?
for the burnt offering, and what did Abraham say to his son? God
will provide himself a sacrifice. And that whole story of Abraham
and Isaac took place at this same place, some 1,000 years
before David is making this sacrifice. 1,000 years earlier, Abraham
went to this same threshing floor. And God provided a ram that was
stuck in a thicket, and the ram was behind Abraham. It's all
a picture of Christ. God did the providing. He provided
himself, and he provided himself for himself. And that's what
the Lord Jesus accomplished on Calvary's cross. His horns, the
strength, that's the animal's strength is in his horns in the
Bible. His horns were caught in a thicket. The Lord Jesus
laid down his crown of glory and took on a crown of thorns
and suffered the wrath of God in order that Isaac might go
free. We are sons of Isaac. The Lord
Jesus bore our penalty for us. And at the threshing floor, at
the threshing floor, what does the wheat use for? It's to make
bread. At the threshing floor, the chaff, is removed from the
grain of wheat. This is the exact same threshing
floor that Solomon later built the temple. And it's the exact
same place that the Lord Jesus was sentenced to the cross, was
sentenced to death by Pilate. It's the place where the Dome
of the Rock sits today in the city of Jerusalem. That's what all of this points
to. It's all pointing to Christ,
who separated the chaff from the wheat. And what does the
Bible say about the chaff? It's thrown into a fire and it's
burned. and the wheat is carried into
the barn. The Lord Jesus, this wind that
blows is the wind of the spirit. It's the wind of the spirit.
And it's the putting away of our sin at Calvary's cross. When
the chaff was thrown into the fire, the Lord Jesus satisfying
the demands of God's justice by suffering his death and the
fire wrath of God. that we might have the bread
of life. And he's still doing that. He
takes us to the threshing floor and he gently, he gently separates
the chaff from the wheat as we grow in grace and in the knowledge
of Christ. And as the spirit of God does
for us what he did for David, he smites our hearts and he causes
us to acknowledge our pride And once again, and again, and again,
continually, until we're rid of this body, we're gonna be
smitten in the heart by the Spirit of God. What is God doing? He's separating the chaff from
the wheat. And He's so gentle about it.
He's so loving about it. He's so careful and so perfect. He knows exactly how hard the
wind needs to blow. He knows exactly how hard the
wheat has to be, has to be threshed and beaten in order to the work
to be accomplished. What a merciful God we have. You know, there's two things
in the Old Testament, the threshing floor, which produced the bread
and the wine press. which produced the wine. And
there was nothing gentle about the wine press. The wine press had to be pressed
out as hard as it could be in order to extract from the grape
the juice of the wine, the juice of the grape to make wine. And
in the fleshing floor and at the wine press, we see the work
of Christ atoning for our sins, our pride, our self-righteousness,
our unbelief that never leaves us. It's always there. Isaiah chapter 63. The Lord Jesus
is speaking when he says, I have trodden the winepress alone. A violent crushing of the grape
in order to extract from that grape the blood. The sacrifice has to be made. And when the sacrifice is made,
and the wheat's been threshed, and the altar's been built, and
the fire of God has fallen, and that all took place 2,000
years ago, like Abraham at this threshing floor with Isaac, the
ram was behind him. We have to look behind us, we
can't look in us. We can't look ahead of us, we
can't look beside us. We can't think, well, I'm gonna
do better and that somehow will atone for my sin, no. We can't
compare ourselves to one another and say, well, I'm doing a little
better than you. We can't look within ourselves and think, well,
I can fix this. We have to look behind us to
find the ram that's stuck in the thicket, the sacrifice that's
been made. the wine press that's been pressed
out, the wheat that's been threshed. And now we have his body and
his blood eating his bread and drinking his wine. And there's
the hope that prideful, sinful men Like David, worst sin David ever committed.
The world wouldn't see it that way. But believers see it that way. Believers realize, my sin's worse
now than it's ever been. Lord, save me.